The many colors of the Huawei Ascend W1 and more on that 6.1 inch Windows Phone

Here at CES 2013, Windows Phone news is few and far between (though no worries, we have some stories coming up in the next day or two). We’ve already seen quite a bit of the Huawei Ascend W1 which was informally announced here at the convention.

Today we got a chance to play with some of the other colors besides black for the entry-level phone. The W1, following Nokia and HTC, comes in White, Black (soft-touch), Cyan and Red and we have to admit the color scheme continues to work with those themes on board (there is a “dreamy blue” custom Accent color as well).

Though the 4” device with 1.2Ghz dual core CPUs won’t be for everyone it’s not a bad low-end phone at all (though Windows Phone 8 stutters a tad with 512MB of RAM).

In speaking with Huawei over some drinks last night we did learn about that 6.1” device that they are reportedly working on. It’s not a 100% go yet as they want to test the market with the Android version first to see if people even want such a massive phone. Assuming it sells well though you can indeed expect Huawei to make a version with our favorite OS.

Also, we learned the W1 should be coming to the US in Q2. Though we don’t have specific carriers to mention there’s a good chance we’ll see it on some MVNOs and regional carriers as a cheap alternative to some of those less-than-stellar Android devices that we often find.

Although pre-paid phones are not a very sexy discussion for mobile technology it’s an important area that Windows Phone needs to make a dent in because right now, Android dominates that area of the market.

The problem seems to be that the "other" stuff is taking up way too much space inside the internal memory (close to 1 GB) in many cases. That's not exactly great when you only had some 3.2 GB to begin with...install some apps on there and people are starting to see a "space low" message already.

Looks like a huge oversight to me and that Microsoft needs to make 8 GB the bare minimum. This stuff reminds me of the HTC Desire fiasco - yeah, you can put stuff on the SD card but it is severely limiting if you only have 37 MB of internal storage.

Why would they wait to sell a 6.1" @windowsphone based on how well the 6.1" android sells? They would have no high end competition on WP8! They could swoop in and steal the show if they made a quality device!

Obviously the 6.1 in phone is an Android device. Too bad people do not realize when when someone is doing the equivalent of patting them on the head to make them feel better when it comes to any other platform.